The Year 1999 was the year when the world’s population reached six billion people. Exactly a week ago, the United Nations (UN) trumpeted the birth of the seven billionth babies, where CNN featured a special report on selected babies worldwide, including the Philippines. The UN announcement sounded like they were happy to greet the new babies dubbed as the seven billionth babies. But it seems the UN was engaged in double-speak.
Pundits all over the world are now saying that the UN report was stage-managed. The UN’s sinister objective to trumpet the seventh billionth baby is really to scare people into action in order to reduce the world’s population through artificial birth control methods and legalizing it by having countries enact Reproductive Health (RH) laws. If you think about it, almost all the nations on this planet already have an RH law and the Philippines is fast becoming the exception.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon held a press conference at the UN headquarters in New York City making a poignant statement, “Plenty of food, but one billion people go hungry. Lavish lifestyles for a few, but poverty for too many others.” I can’t say that I don’t agree with the UN Secretary General’s views. Indeed, there’s plenty of food out there, but we just can’t understand why a billion people are hungry? Which brings us to ask the UN, what is it doing to end hunger in those areas… by reducing the population?
What’s even more intriguing is a report that I read that revealed that the US Census Bureau estimated that the world’s population won’t reach the seven billionth mark until March of 2012… some even say that it may even come much later like the year 2014 as population growth rates are falling in many countries. So why is the UN spreading the news of the seven billionth baby when this has not yet happened?
The big question I’d like to ask UN officials is whether or not the 5.5 lbs Baby Danica, the second child of Camille Galura and her partner Florante Camacho who was born in Manila’s Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital (she was born exactly two minutes before midnight of Oct. 30 and not Oct. 31) is truly the seven billionth baby as the UN announced? Perhaps the UN ought to clarify its position, given the embarrassing report given by the US Census Bureau that the seven billionth baby is yet to come?
I also got another report saying, “Demographers say that it took until 1804 for the world to reach its first billion people, and a century more until it hit 2 billion in 1927. The 20th Century, though, saw things begin to cascade: 3 billion in 1959; 4 billion in 1974; 5 billion in 1987 and 6 billion in 1999.”
Some of the reports I got suggest that the UN issued that seven billionth baby in order to plug its population control program and specifically chose the Philippines, pointing to the premature Baby Danica who should not even be qualified for being born two minutes too early. Pundits reckon that UN Population officials chose the Philippines because we as a people have long resisted the UN’s reproductive rights and population control agenda. I tend to believe that this is true.
If there is anything that the UN is very good in doing, it is having statistics in almost anything in the world, whether it’s demography or accident rates on a per city or country basis or statistics on the world’s food supply. I remember way back in 1972 when I stayed in New York for seven months. My brother Rene who worked in the UN told me that there was a wire across the street in front of the UN Headquarters that counted all the vehicles that passed that street everyday. So why would the UN declare the seven billionth baby when it has not yet arrived?
I have no doubt that the UN Population officials succumbed to that Malthusian economic theory on population, which so many economists still believe today… that the more people on this earth would mean more poor people and consequently, the lesser people would mean a better economy. But if you looked at the economic miracle that is China today, you will know that the Malthusian theory has been debunked. Look at small island nations like Guam or Papua New Guinea where their populations are small, their economy would be nowhere if Filipino expats did not work there.
I’m one of the few who believes strongly that the UN has failed the world. If you talked about politics, the fact that today Israel and Palestine has yet to have some kind of peace is proof of the UN’s failure. That today, the Korean Peninsula is still divided between North and South Korea is a UN failure. Recent UN failures is when the UN Security Council opposed any plan to stop the killing in Syria, despite the fact that 3,000 Syrians have already been killed. So will we trust the UN to handle the population programs of the world, including the Philippines? Not if they lie to the world like what they just did in announcing the 7th billionth child when it has yet to happen.
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For e-mail responses to this article, write to vsbobita@mozcom.comor vsbobita@gmail.com. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.